Fortunately, writing in my target language has not been too much of a challenge as there are a similar number of consonants and vowels in Korean as in English, besides the addition of double vowels and consonants. The only writing I’ve done has been while learning to write the alphabet and learning to form words, but I definitely prefer writing free handed. In fact, it’s more difficult for me to type on Korean -- mainly because I don’t have a Korean keyboard on my computer -- so I’ve been using an online Korean keyboard website to help with that. As I’ve been learning the grammar structure, I’m realizing that the patterns are pretty consistent which makes it much easier to learn Korean. For example, the block structure represents the sound of a given syllable and always starts with a consonant and there will never be more than 3 letters per block structure. I haven’t quite gotten to the point of forming sentences yet, but so far my understanding is that there are Korean participles to say “something”: 는 or 은 (Subject) and 를 or 을 (Object). Formality is also a key aspect of the Korean language, so there are many different ways to conjugate a word depending on the context of the situation. In addition, the Korean word for “to be” (이다) is very distinct from English and even other languages such as Spanish. For example, in Spanish we considered “to be” to be a verb (ir/estar), but in Korean 이다 can be conjugated, but it is also distinct from verbs and adjectives as the rules are often different. I found it very interesting that in English we use the verb “to be” when using adjectives, for example, “I am pretty, hungry, smart, etc.” but in Korean there is no translation for the form of “to be,” which in English is words like “am, is are, etc.” However, in Korean “to be” 이다 is used when describing something is a noun, such as “I am a man” (나는 남자이다). It is also interesting that there are two different forms for the word “that” in Korean (그/저) but we only use one form in English. Apparently this is to distinguish between something mentioned in a previous context and talking about something we can see but not touch because it is too far away. This is only a brief introduction to the basic grammar structure of Korean, and I have so much more to learn about in terms of conjugating and forming more complex sentences!
Source:
https://www.howtostudykorean.com/unit1/unit-1-lessons-1-8/unit-1-lesson-1/
Comments
I'm also in the process of learning to make Korean sentences and particles are a pretty big hurdle. There are many different variations for particles depending on the positioning and usage. There is a format that can be generalized to when making sentences though as Korean uses the subject-object-verb structure.
Hey Kayla! I feel the exact same way about Slovak in terms of freehand versus typing on the computer. It's really frustrating to have approximately 20 letters not readily available when typing something in Slovak. Once you start forming more sentences, I imagine it would be more difficult to type Korean on the computer. It seems like freehand writing may be the way to go for the moment because it leads to less frustration and helps with better comprehension of the content being written.